Mountains. France, therefore, lost in this single contest every vestige of her power in North America. Not a foot of soil remained to her, only the two little islands of St. Pierre and Miquelon out in the Atlantic, as a shelter for her fishermen.

IMPORTANCE OF THIS TREATY TO NORTH AMERICA. The importance of this treaty to the future of North America can scarcely be overestimated. The contest itself was in reality for supremacy in North America. It was a contest of race, of laws, of manners and customs, of language and of religion. Had the French conquered, in all human probability North America would have been French to-day, with her language, her people, her customs, her laws, her religion. On the contrary, as England conquered, the continent was destined to become English, a free country; liberty as its watchword, and progress and prosperity the result. This was the supreme moment in the history of North America.

The most

THE DRIFT TOWARDS INDEPENDENCE. sagacious men of the time at once began to foresee a contest between the colonies and the home government. As early as 1760 Calvert, the secretary of Maryland, wrote as follows: "It has been hinted to me, that at the peace, acts of parliament will be moved for amendment of government and a standing force in America, and that the colonies for whose protection the force will be established, must bear at least the greatest share of the charge. This will occasion a tax."

Pratt, the attorney-general, but known in America as Lord Camden, is reported to have said to Benjamin Franklin: "For all that you Americans say of your

loyalty, and notwithstanding your boasted affection, you will one day set up for independence." Franklin in all honesty replied: "No such idea is entertained by the Americans or ever will be, unless you grossly abuse them." To this Pratt replied: "Very true. That I see will happen and will produce the event."

Count de Vergennes, one of the most sagacious and wise statesmen that France ever produced, then the French ambassador at Constantinople, when he heard the conditions of the treaty, said to a British traveller, and afterward himself recalled the prediction to the notice of the British ministry: "The consequences of the entire cession of Canada are obvious. I am persuaded England will ere long repent having removed the only check that could keep her colonies in awe. They stand no longer in need of her protection. She will call upon them to contribute towards supporting the burdens they have helped to bring on her; and they will answer by striking off all dependence." These predictions of the French statesman are worthy a place beside some of those remarkable prophesies attributed to Napoleon the First.

England confidently expected, as a result of this war, a boundless increase of her wealth.

A month before the treaty was ratified, what had long been resolved upon was publicly avowed: "That the standing army of twenty battalions was to be kept up in America after the peace, and that the expense was to be defrayed by the colonists themselves." But England was to be disappointed in the result. Bancroft, the historian, says: "The colonial system, being founded on injustice, was at war with itself. The common inter

est of the great maritime powers of Europe in unholding it existed no more. The Seven Years' War, which doubled the debt of England, increasing it to seven hundred millions of dollars, was begun by her for the acquisition of the Ohio valley. She achieved that conquest, but not for herself. Driven out from its share in the great colonial system, France was swayed by its commercial and political interests, by its wounded pride, and by that enthusiasm which the support of a good cause enkindles, to take up the defence of the freedom of the seas, and to desire the enfranchisement of the English plantations. This policy was well devised; and England became not so much the possessor of the valley of the west, as the trustee, commissioned to transfer it from the France of the middle ages to the free people who were making for humanity a new life in America."

The Anglo-Saxon tongue, spoken by a large part of the Teutonic race, with its strong tendency to individuality and freedom, was to prevail throughout the continent. Not only so, but it was destined to spread itself more widely and to exert upon the destinies of mankind a greater influence than any tongue ever heretofore spoken by the human race.

Bancroft, in closing the second volume of his great history, indulges in the following glowing apostrophe to this, our English tongue :

"Go forth, then, language of Milton and Hampden, language of my country. Take possession of the North American continent. Gladden the waste places with every tone that has been rightly struck on the English lyre, with every English word that has been spoken

Give an echo to the now

well for liberty and for man. silent and solitary mountains; gush out with the fountains, that as yet sing their anthems all day long without repose; fill the valleys with the voices of love in its purity, the pledges of friendship in its faithfulness; and as the morning sun drinks the dewdrops from the flowers all the way from the dreary Atlantic to the Peaceful ocean, meet him with the joyous hum of the early industry of freemen. Utter boldly and spread widely through the world the thoughts of the coming apostles of the people's liberty, till the sound that cheers the desert shall thrill through the heart of humanity, and the lips of the messenger of the people's power, as he stands in beauty upon the mountains, shall proclaim the renovating tidings of equal freedom for the race."

CHAPTER VII.

THE GERMS OF UNION.

It should be remembered that the English colonies, which were stretched along the Atlantic coast, had but few bonds of union. They were colonies of the same mother country. They were subject to the laws of Great Britain. They were, more or less, according to their several charters and grants, under the control of the British parliament; but they were jealous of each other. There was no mutual dependence one upon another. Their interests were diverse, and it was an exceedingly difficult matter for the leaders of the people to foster a spirit of union between them. When that union came, it came not from the leaders, but spontaneously from the masses of the people themselves.

Each of the colonies exercised certain powers of selfgovernment, but none claimed independence from England.

THE FIRST UNION. · The first union that was formed between any of the colonies was as early as 1643. At that time the Indians were threatening the white settlers of Connecticut and Massachusetts. To resist the common enemy a union was formed between the colonies of the Massachusetts Bay, Plymouth, Connecticut, and New Haven, under the name of "The United Colonies of New England." Another object of this union was to resist the claims and encroachments of the